Arts & Culture on the Pacific Rim : A SPECIAL REPORT : The Vietnam War: De-Rambo-ized by the Vietnamese

Helicopters hover like birds of prey as they descend almost to the reeds sticking out of the marshes that stretch in all directions. Seeking shelter in the murky waters, a young father, mother and their baby in a small basket silently dart from one watery hiding place to another, sometimes submerging, with the baby pressed close as they seek to evade the aircrafts’ searchlights. . . .

This is one of the many almost unbearably tense scenes in “The Abandoned Field . . . Free Fire Zone” (1979), a film about guerrilla warfare as seen through the eyes of Vietnamese film makers. In December, 1988, “The Abandoned Field” was screened at the Hawai’i International Film Festival and on April 1-11 it and other Vietnamese films will be shown for the first time on the U.S. mainland at UCLA’s Melnitz Hall.

Although “The Abandoned Field’s” focus is on the Mekong Delta guerrillas outwitting the invaders, it conveys a sense of sadness rather than that of triumph when they succeed. When an American is killed, the camera lingers on his baby’s snapshot as it falls from his pocket. An American is ordered to descend the ladder of his helicopter but scrambles back up when a snake springs out from the sheltering reeds. Hardly “Rambo” or even “Platoon.” The vivid images convey what no words could: This is not a land or a war an outsider could win.

Three of the Vietnamese feature films screened at the Hawaii festival use the war as a backdrop, yet each story centers on family and personal relationships.

No film is made in Vietnam without government approval. However, that is not the problem it might appear to be. At the Hawaii festival, three top representatives of the Vietnam film industry--Dang Nhat Minh, director and writer of “When the Tenth Month Comes,” Bui Dinh Hac, a founder of the Vietnam Cinema Department, pioneer documentarian and feature-film director, and Dinh Quang, vice minister of culture, former drama critic and rector of the Vietnam Drama and Cinema School--made it clear that Vietnam will welcome any opportunity to cooperate with U.S. film makers.

All three men are sensitive to the need for help to their young directors. They are embarrassed at their lack of ability to portray Western characters without making them seem like cartoons (as shown in “Abandoned Field’s” mustachioed American pilots). They are unanimous in expressing the hope that the upcoming film tour will establish more regular contact with the American film industry.

They recognize their need for better equipment, for greater technical expertise and instruction in every phase of film making. “The Abandoned Field”--which used helicopters reconstructed from aircraft and spare parts left by the Americans--was shot on location, but all sound was dubbed in the studio because of sound-equipment shortcomings. They know how to make an award-winning movie for $80,000, but they must still use black-and-white film because their color is such poor quality. To be able to send interns to the United States is a dream they hope will come true soon. Despite a U.S. trade embargo, they welcome to their country all film personnel willing to share their expertise.

Dinh said his views of Americans had not changed much during his visit to Honolulu. “I feel we have always had a more accurate impression of Americans than Americans had of us. Americans had in mind only stereotypes and were led astray by a fantasy created by the mass media. For us--even during the war--emphasis was placed on knowing that our quarrel was with the U.S. government and not with the people.”

All nodded their heads as he listed U.S. war films he felt were unrealistic or downright bad: They had found no redeeming values in “The Deer Hunter” and “Rambo,” but a few good things in “Platoon,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “Coming Home.”

Other films screened at the festival, like “84 Charlie Mopec,” Patrick Duncan’s new film from the Sundance Institute, and “Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam,” convinced them that U.S. film makers are indeed exploring fresh approaches to the war.

In trying to explain why the Vietnamese have been able to take a gentler stance in dealing with the war and “the enemy,” Dang said, “You forget that we had been at war from 1945 to 1975. We saw it differently from you. We were fighting for our homeland, first with the French and then, like your Civil War, among ourselves; the United States’ war was only the last part for us.”

Dang took the lead in a question about censorship: “Censorship is not a problem with us as it is with you. . . . Everybody in the government who deals with films is a creative person himself. It is then not a matter of principle but of personalities. We trust them and we try to get our film made the best way we can. You have censorship in America too: When a producer goes to the financiers, he knows he will have to make changes if he is to get his money.

“Also, we must think of what the public will pay to go and see--isn’t that a kind of censorship? And the weather, the locations all play a part in making us change our scripts.”

John Charlot of the East-West Center’s Institute of Culture and Communications, which coordinated the Hawaiian festival, confirmed that Vietnam Cinema Department officials are film makers with impressive credits: “It’s not too strange that they don’t regard censorship as a matter of principle. They’re more concerned with who is the person who will be doing the censoring. It’s usually someone they know and maybe have worked with. They are very pragmatic. Cooperation with American companies has already begun. Several groups have scouted the country for locations and have plans to shoot on location. One such enterprise’s working script is entitled “The Other War,” written and to be directed by Frank Vrechek. Along with Ricky Lee, he wrote “Exit Subic,” a 1988 film set in the shadow of the United States’ largest naval base in the Philippines. It is the story of the daughter of a Filipina and a U.S. serviceman and her hopes of making a better life for herself. The film was screened at the Hawaiian festival.

Co-producers of “The Other War” are David Levy and Robert Altman Jr. Said Levy: “It is a film unlike most American-made war films because only one of the major characters is American. . . . We hope to provide the most realistic perspective yet shown to a Western audience. Those too young to have lived through it will finally get a look at the reality and not some ‘murky metaphor.’ ”

Levy said he found the ordinary people of Vietnam as ready to accept Americans as the government is--but for different reasons: “In my experience with all Third World people, I have found they have this amazing capacity to separate the people from their government. I believe the vice minister when he says they always knew they were fighting the U.S. government and not the American people. The well-known (North) Vietnamese Gen. (Vo Nguyen) Giap was asked once why the war had ended as it did in spite of the devastation wrought by American troops and he is said to have answered: ‘Because we had allies on the streets of America.’ ”

Now that the American public seems to have accepted its once-controversial Vietnam War memorial, and the possibility that opposition to the war did not necessarily make one a traitor, it may be ready to listen to voices raised in friendship from the Vietnamese film industry.

The Vietnam film tour, which will examine at least 20 films from Vietnam, is being spearheaded by Geoffrey Gilmore for the UCLA Film and Television Archives in cooperation with the Hawai’i International Film Festival, the Asia Society and the American Film Institute. Major figures from the U.S. and Vietnamese film industries are being lined up along with scholars and critics in conjunction with screenings. At least 25 major film and academic centers throughout the country have lined up for the tour. The project is being funded by a grant from the numerous Hawaiian-based business and by fees generated from the tour.

Whether Americans are ready to welcome Vietnamese films with the same cordiality shown to films from other Asian countries remains to be seen. The year-long tour of the Vietnam Film Project may do a great deal to further that goal.

This special report was edited by David Kishiyama, an assistant Calendar editor